New books in History

Partly insulated from the rest of the Islamic world, the Uyghurs constructed a local history that is at once unique and assimilates elements of Semitic, Iranic, Turkic, and Indic traditions—the cultural imports of Silk Road travelers. Through both ethnographic and historical analysis,Thum offers a new understanding of Uyghur historical practices, detailing the remarkable means by which this people reckons with its past and confronts its nationalist aspirations in the present day.

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Ashraf into Middle Classes: Muslims in Nineteenth-century Delhiby Margrit Pernau (Oxford University Press; 544 pages; August 2013). Treating identities as inherently dynamic and ever changing, Pernau argues that religious identity became central for Muslims only in the last third of the nineteenth century, and this was closely linked with the creation of a middle class whose members described themselves as ashraf, or “men from a good family.”

NEW Compassionate Communalism: Welfare and Sectarianism in Lebanon by Melani Cammett (Cornell University Press; 336 pages; April 2014). From years of research into welfare distribution strategies of Christian, Shia Muslim, and Sunni Muslim political parties in Lebanon, Cammett shows how and why sectarian groups deploy welfare benefits for goals such as attracting marginal voters, solidifying intraconfessional support, mobilizing mass support, and supporting militia fighters.

Ibn Khaldunby Syed Farid Alatas (Oxford University Press; 160 pages; August 2013). Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) was one of the most remarkable Muslim scholars of the pre-modern period. Alatas provides an extended discussion of Ibn Khaldun’s views on education and knowledge, and on society.

The Iconography of Malcolm Xby Graeme Abernethy (University of Kansas Press; 328 pages; $35; Oct. 2013) Abernethy captures both the multiplicity and global import of a person who has been framed as both villain and hero, cast by mainstream media during his lifetime as “the most feared man in American history,” and elevated at his death as a heroic emblem of African American identity.

The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad by Claude Andrew Clegg III (University of North Carolina Press; 400 pages; Sept. 2014). Clegg weaves together speeches and published works by Muhammad, and delves into declassified government documents, insider accounts, audio and video records, and interviews, producing the definitive account of an extraordinary man and his legacy.

The Maghreb Since 1800by Knut S. Vikor (Hurst Publications; 356 pages; Oct. 2013). This short history of the Maghreb surveys its development from the coming of Islam to the present day, but with greatest emphasis on the modern period from the early nineteenth century onwards.

Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco by Aomar Boum (Stanford University Press; 240 pages; Oct. 2013). Boum combines history and ethnography in a study of how four successive generations remember Morocco’s Jewish community, which by the 1980s had lost 240,000 people to emigration.

Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a political ideaby Faisal Devji (Harvard University Press; 288 pages; Sept. 2013). Muslim Zion cuts to the core of the geopolitical paradoxes entangling Pakistan to argue that India’s rival has never been a nation-state in the conventional sense.

The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran: Tradition, Memory, and Conversion(Cambridge University Press; 304 pages; Sept. 2013). How do converts to a religion come to feel an attachment to it? The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran answers this important question for Iran by focusing on the role of memory and its revision and erasure in the ninth to eleventh centuries.

The Orphan Scandal: Christian Missionaries and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood by Beth Baron (Stanford University Press; 264 pages; 2014). Links the beginnings of the Brotherhood and other Islamist groups to an anti-missionary movement that swept Egypt after a June 1933 incident in which a Muslim orphan was beaten after she refused to rise as a sign of respect to elders at a Christian missionary school in Port Said.

Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republicby Michael Axworthy (Oxford University Press; 528 pages; Sept. 2013). Axworthy guides us through recent Iranian history from shortly before the 1979 Islamic revolution through the summer of 2009, when an outpouring of support for an end to tyranny in Iran paused and then moved on to other areas in the region like Egypt and Libya, leaving Iran’s leadership unchanged.

Saladin by Anne-Marie Eddé (Harvard University Press; 704 pages; May 2014). Unlike biographies that focus on Saladin’s military exploits, Eddé’s narrative draws on an array of contemporary sources to depict a ruler shaped profoundly by the complex Arabian political environment in which he rose to prominence.

Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islam by John Calvert (Oxford University Press; 392 pages; Sept. 2013). This book rescues Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) from the popular media’s misrepresentation, tracing the evolution of his thought within the context of his time, and recounting Qutb’s life from a small village to his execution at the behest of Abd al-Nasser’s regime.

Turko-Mongol Rulers, Cities and City Lifeedited by David Durand-Guety (Brill; 452 pages; Sept. 2013). What was the attitude of these dynasties towards the many cities they controlled, some of which were of considerable size? This volume brings together specialists in various disciplines and periods, from pre-Chingissid Eurasia to nineteenth-century Iran.